Gikken’s foundation was laid in 2011 or so. I don’t remember the exact year but I was in high school. I was amidst my most active English learning years. I was trying to read as many articles, blogs, essays, etc in English as possible. At some point, an idea that it’d be great to double click on words to get them translated right there struck me. It was the early days of Google Chrome that wasn’t the most popular browser yet. And, I think it already could translate pages entirely, but it was totally useless for me because when I can understand 80% of the text, why would I translate it entirely? It’s also terrible for mastering a language. Guessing the meanings of words from the context works better for memorizing new vocabulary. The more effort your brain takes, the stronger neural connections are.

So, physiology aside, I wanted a fast way to translate single words I didn’t understand or double-check sentences. The previous flow involved copying it, switching to a new tab with Google Translate opened there, translating it, and then switching back. Terribly inefficient and annoying when you have to do it 10 times per article, 100 times per day.

By the time I was obsessed with this idea, I could already easily implement anything I wanted on the web. I started coding at 13, so I had already at least 2 or so years of experience with copycatting news portals, trying to build my social network (who didn’t!), and reinventing a few popular JavaScript libraries. It was the early days of not only Google Chrome but also Chrome Web Store—the extension store. I made an extension that I needed for my own needs, called Instant Translate, and uploaded it to the Chrome Web Store. Uncunningly, the timing was perfect for organic growth through the store as Instant Translate happened to be one of the first extensions there. The 15-year-old me knew something only about building apps but absolutely nothing about turning them into a business. Thus, I relied on "organic growth". In other words, routinely checking analytics and praying that it grew. I did nothing more than that for the first few years.

I always had an eye for decor whether it was with my room, home, or anything. I was born and raised in Albuquerque, NM, and went to college at the University of New Mexico where I got my bachelor’s in Biology and a minor in Psychology. All along with my schooling, I was following the path to becoming a dentist which I thought was my passion and what I enjoyed. When I graduated high school I wanted to throw myself a big party. So my dad gave me a budget of $3,000 which had to include the venue, DJ, catering, bar, and decor.

I learned that when advertising you have to try different and unique ideas. From this you will learn what will work for your specific clientele, this process is a trial and error.

Of course, you know when you want a real fancy party the venue usually takes most of the budget, as it did. I was left with $200 for decor. I then began talking to decor companies and found that everything I wanted was not going to be possible with that amount. I thought out of the box and began making all my own decor.

In 1990, I was about 8 years out of law school and practicing ‘regular’ law when I decided to combine my legal training with my lifelong passion for music. I began to shift into entertainment law by educating myself about it. I already knew a lot of musicians and soon developed a base of clients.

Almost all the work attorneys do for music clients is transactional (mostly contract-related), and that’s the kind of work I was doing. It felt good to help my clients protect their intellectual property (like copyrights). However, I found that an artist’s attorney often only had intermittent contact with them (like negotiating a recording contract) and they often didn’t interact with them for long stretches of time.

I wanted to be more involved in all aspects of the artist’s career and I began managing artists in 1996. That actually involved longer hours (and a pay cut, since I was now working on a commission basis instead of being paid an hourly fee), but I found it to be more satisfying work. And being an attorney gave me an advantage over other managers who weren’t attorneys.

I was always that guy trying to create a fun experience for people. I hated the idea of waking up and knowing EXACTLY how the day is going to pan out (drive to work, meeting, lunch, get yelled at by clients, drive home, watch tv, go to bed. Rinse and repeat every day for the rest of your life) So I would be the one kidnapping people on their birthdays, putting googly eyes on every picture in the office, etc.

“I hated the idea of waking up and knowing EXACTLY how the day is going to pan out (drive to work, meeting, lunch, get yelled at by clients, drive home, watch tv, go to bed. Rinse and repeat every day for the rest of your life)”

The business kind of happened by accident. It all started with the Reddit Secret santa gift exchange. (here’s the wikipedia) In short, 100k people sign up, get matched with someone, and send them a gift for the holidays! I’d been participating for years. I’d sent and received some really incredible gifts.

I was led to this career path as a business owner from my sheer motivation to do better in my life than what I had grown up with. My parents had me when they were teenagers and we lived meagerly while I was young.

I knew that if I wanted to go to college, I would need to find a way to pay for it myself along with my cost of living. I naturally had a knack for doing hair and art, so when I was 16, I had the chance to enroll in cosmetology school while in high school, and by 18, I was fully licensed. This was much more affordable for me than the traditional college route, so that’s what led me to pursue it.

When I received my license in 1995, I started working behind the chair at Supercuts. I slowly worked my way up the ladder to high-end salons. Five years later, I got a small suite at the Gallery of Salons and was an independent contractor. That was my initial stepping stone to running my own business.

We started the food truck business in 2012.

We kept finding it very difficult to find locations to operate. We had a booker that we used to find our locations but fell short and we let her go. I took over our booking and found that most people did not want to book just one truck, not only that they were upset that most of the time the trucks didn’t show up or were late.

We learned the real need was not only helping the trucks but providing a turnkey service for the corporations. This was a game-changer for us, we were really struggling financially.

I am a licensed attorney in India and right after my master’s in law, I started working with a leading company as a lawyer. I worked there for about two years before I quit my job to become more location independent.

Choose a niche in whatever you start. It is critical for streamlining your efforts and make money.

My job paid me well but I worked 12 hours a day, I was exhausted by the end of each day, spent my weekends sleeping and I almost quit the things I liked to do - for example, sketching, yoga, traveling, etc.

Growing up, I’ve always been into technology. I built my first website when I was in first grade, I built my first graphing calculator app when I was in sixth grade, and I used to run the internet’s largest website dedicated to Ralph Wiggum from The Simpsons.

I waited in line for the iPhone the day it launched in 2007, and I was instantly hooked. I knew I had to learn how to build software for this device. Eventually, I learned how to jailbreak my device which allowed me to run custom apps on it (this being before the launch of the App Store).

Even though I had a passion for technology, I never really wanted a career in it. My dream job was to work as a technical director for live television broadcasts, and the only class that was close to that at my school was the capstone course for the Professional Journalism program. I ended up switching my major from Computer Engineering to that and abandoned any dreams of professionally writing software.

I came up with TeamFFLEX seeing the massive trend of everything turning online and want to help as many people as possible achieve results. In a traditional gym format trainers job, there are only so many hours you can work in a day and a limit on clients you can actually work with. For example, if a client does a 60-minute session and you work an 8 hour day you can see 8 clients within that day. There are also of course training teams, and classes as well as small groups but still even if I could have worked with 100 people a day in a gym it would not have been enough.

I wanted to find a way to help people all around the world. The people that couldn’t get to the gym or didn’t have the money to hire an expensive trainer. I wanted to make sure that no matter where people were at the gym or at home they had the ability to take action on their health and fitness and get results.

Seeing in today's world how basically kids are born with an iPhone in hand it all just made perfect sense. Take personal training online and help people all around the world. The thing about today's society is that we want it now. We don't want to wait. We don't want to go into a building, meet with some trainer, get sold on all the different expensive packages and then pay basically to have a really expensive cheerleader. I honestly believe that within the next 10 years we won’t see trainers in gyms anymore. The quality of training in gyms continues to drop due to the fact that not enough people get training and also that trainers can’t even make enough money to sustain a living. I knew that if I could go online with everything not only would I be able to impact people to a much larger degree, I would also be able to live a life on my terms.

I come from an entrepreneurial family. My father works for himself and my maternal grandfather started a clothing factory. Working for myself has always been encouraged by my family, but before I could get started, I needed to learn a skill. At Georgetown, I study international politics and business. Most students with these backgrounds go on to work at prestigious firms like J.P. Morgan. I really didn’t know what kind of business I could start, and frankly, planned to work as a (boring) data analyst after graduation.

If you have an idea but don’t have the knowledge to execute, use that idea as motivation and go learn how to turn your vision into reality.

Tutoring first came to mind because I had spent significant time working for other tutoring companies and cutting my teeth/learning how the industry works during my teen years. I first started tutoring when I was 15. I was hired by College Experts, a local test prep center in Davie, Florida. My first student was three years older than me, and I spent our first session teaching him how to use his calculator rather than trying to explain any complicated formulas. Being a student myself, I was able to bring a student’s perspective to tutoring. I worked for College Experts until my senior year of high school when I began tutoring on my own and finding clients on Craigslist.

One day back in 2012, I happened to go to a local flea market. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, and I'm not a flea market or garage sale regular.

I noticed these two old radios for $15 each. I had not been interested in old radios before, and I was not a collector or a retro guy. These particular radios were from 1950s, bright and colorful, oozing with retro pride, but in sad, neglected shape.

As far as my professional background, I have an electrical engineering degree but never worked on radios. My understanding of these things was only basic at best. I knew analog audio sounded better than digital from my guitar days.

In 2011, coming out of college, I miserably tried to start a penny auction website. I studied Political Science at University, which had absolutely no bearing on this idea. I knew I wanted to do something entrepreneurial and was consumed by this auction model. I had my own specific mechanics that I thought would make the game a lot more fair for the average consumer. But alas, 6-8 months later, after burning through thousands of dollars trying to get the technology right, I was absolutely nowhere.

I was resigned to not give up, but the mechanics of the auction are critical to the smooth operation of the website and if you can’t get it right you don’t have a business. So I decided to start taking on some freelance writing work, just to get some cash in.

One thing led to another and I started getting some bigger clients with bigger asks. Eventually, I snowballed hiring some writers and copy editors. Turning this thing into a full-time business operation.

I was unhappily working in marketing for a Fortune 500 insurance company when I started looking at ways to create a new income stream. I became interested in ecommerce and invested in a course to learn more. I compiled a list of keywords for products that had decent search volume and not terribly competitive to rank for in organic search. I used Long Tail Pro to get ideas--I had so many when I first started!

My business is a small, mostly passive income stream and I’m okay with that. There is so much more I could be doing with my store, but right now I am loving the extra income stream that allows me to work part-time at my day job and spend more time with my infant daughter.

A bunch of keywords in the dollhouse miniatures space fit the bill. I used Long Tail Pro and looked for keywords that were competitive--which on there is a score in the twenties or low thirties. I also wanted them to have at least 2,000 searches per month. This is not a ton, but five keywords with that search volume that are not that competitive can lead to a decent number of organic traffic if you build your site the right way. My advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is to find a niche with a nice handful of keywords you can rank for with quality content and a nice backlinking strategy. Don’t try to be number one for some saturated keyword that has a million searches a month. Go for keywords where you stand a chance of ranking--this is usually so-called long tail keywords that are really phrases--for example, “wooden dollhouse furniture” instead of just “dollhouse.”

I have always had a passion for animals. I was going to school full time at the University of Rhode Island as a Pre-Vet student while working full time at a local veterinary hospital AND picking up pet sitting and dog walking clients on the side.

Since my late teenage years, I have known that I wanted to work with animals. While working at the animal hospital, I saw a great need for this type of service, and soon after decided to start this business!

I would often come across clients who had not traveled in years because their pets required specialized care or medications or because they did not know who to ask or whom they could trust with their pets and their home.

I began my business career with the family in-store sampling business, C.A. Courtesy, in the 1990s, while at the same time attending college at Johnson and Wales University, where I pursued a degree in Web Management & Internet Commerce.

I’ve always had a knack for marketing and technology, and when I left C.A. Courtesy, I was the Vice President of Marketing and Technology.

People don’t remember what you say as much as they remember how they felt when you said it.

We both had previous experience in another start-up called Soul id which was a social media platform for action sports. We ran the marketing and media at that company which was a blast. After we left that company, we split directions. Eli got involved in the eCommerce industry by starting a brand called Winterial which he grew to hundreds of SKUs. Kyle headed in the media direction and started a commercial photography company where he worked with Fortune 500 companies and small businesses.

At this time Kyle wanted to be able to get back in the start-up world, grow a large brand and a team of like-minded creatives and innovators. So like any entrepreneur, he jumped on Google and started to search for media companies that were also technology-based companies as well. That is where the inspiration of starting a digital agency that solely focused on the media portion for brands and product companies came to life.

Culture is the centerpiece of a successful company. Creating a place for employees to come to work and enjoy what they do, the environment and who they work with will pay long term dividends.

Hello, my name is Mohamad Saad, and I am one of the founders of HalalWorldDepot, America’s premier Halal online marketplace. The company started three years ago as meat and grocery delivery service and slowly grew into a full-blown online marketplace offering a wide range of Halal products.

With a simple goal of getting as many Halal items listed, we also focus on building a community of Muslims around the United States to connect and come together. A home formed on a website where all can feel welcomed and comfortable shopping and finding the products they need.

My name is Dave Chesson and I’m the founder of Kindlepreneur, a website devoted to help and teach authors how to self-publish, and market their books on Amazon and other online stores.

I’m also a 7x bestselling author and when I’m not working on the above, I’m also a consultant to multiple publishing companies and NYT bestselling authors.

Hello! My name is Nishant Tripathi, and I founded Dhobilite, a premium online dry cleaning, and laundry service. I started this company in 2011 with a vision to pioneer laundry service in India.

We started operations in the year 2011. Over the years, we experimented with and developed our business model and software. In 2015, we disrupted the laundry market and became India's first app-based, on-demand laundry service provider. We have expanded into more than 15 cities in the last two years and have around 20+ stores today. In addition, we have 30 plus franchises. We also have factories in Gurgaon, Noida, Lucknow, Hyderabad, and Faridabad.

Hi, I’m Mike Moloney, the founder of FilterGrade. FilterGrade is a marketplace for creators where you can find digital assets such as presets, LUTs, video templates, and much more.

Today thousands of creators from all around the world buy and sell digital products on FilterGrade and more than 450,000 users visit the site every month.

Hey! My name is Neel Parekh and I am the Founder and CEO of MaidThis® & MaidThis® Franchise, a cleaning franchise that helps residential homeowners and short-term rental hosts (Airbnb, VRBO, etc) with their cleanings.

We’ve been able to grow rapidly compared to many other local cleaning companies because of a few main factors:

• We made our niche focus on cleaning Airbnbs and vacation rentals, in addition to regular home cleaning, which is a rapidly growing industry. We became the first cleaning franchise specializing in vacation rental cleaning.
  
• Local businesses are often pretty old school and typically aren’t the best with marketing, especially digital marketing. We’re bringing new-age marketing tactics to this old-school industry.
  
• Remote work: we’ve been able to stay extra nimble and lean with having a global workforce. This was initially done out of necessity so I could travel, but quickly became a huge competitive advantage. Our office team works across 8 different countries.

My name is Sasha Weekes and I’m the 25 years old owner of Timber Grove Studios. Our home-based woodshop is nestled in the hills of PEI’s countryside, and we specialize in decorative shelving and home decor with a focus on minimalist design and simplicity. Each piece is made to order with 20+ color options, meaning it will be the perfect fit for each customer's space. We ship Canada and U.S. wide.

Etsy has been the main platform since starting up, although I finally have a standalone website up and running as well which I hope to grow in order to diversify sales channels. I have no current employees, although I have a wonderful subcontractor who works from home to cut and stain wood for me. She’s paid by the piece so it’s a great system for both of us. My partner Mario works full time but has recently joined me on the side and we’ve released a new line of steel table bases together which has been a ton of fun - he is an awesome welder.

After launching in 2017 and being skeptical about making sales of large items online, I was absolutely proved wrong! The business outgrew our small condo basement within 7 months and outgrew the garage/basement of our next rental home in 7 months as well. We’re now happily settled with a detached shop and garage, meaning there’s some room to grow (for now!) and space to begin stocking up on items for the Christmas rush before summer ends.

Moving twice in two years has definitely caused organizational, financial and opportunity hiccups, but the business has grown steadily regardless so we’re very excited about where 2020 will take us. We’ve learned what to focus on during which months, as revenue can range anywhere from $2000 during slow months to $10,000 during high months. Net profit has run anywhere between 20-50% throughout the life of the business and varies month to month. It’s closer to 20% right now as we’ve been spending all we can on new tools and materials for our new larger products and our Christmas stock.

I’m Dan Stewart and I’m the founder of Dundas Valley Pools. We help homeowners with swimming pools in Southern Ontario, Canada maximize the summers in their backyard. We do this by providing personalized, on-site services such as pool openings/ closings, pool maintenance, equipment installations, pool renovations, and new pool installations. Since our humble beginnings in May of 2016 we have serviced 350+ pools, opened and closed 200+ pools, and have installed tons of high-quality pool equipment, pool liners, and winter safety covers for happy customers throughout Southern Ontario.

Dundas Valley Pools has grown from a company producing very little revenue in 2016 to a company that is earning an average of $8000/ month net revenue during the on-season. This year we hope to actually double that number. This is due to our expansion into more technical services as well as taking on larger jobs-- namely, new pool installations.

Hey everyone ! My name is Alex Albarran and I’m the founder of Dream Client Academy . We’re a consulting & marketing firm based in Hollywood, Florida. I launched the company when I was 19 years old and working on my undergraduate degree.

I’ve been the only full-time member of the company up to this point (with part-time contractors). Moving into 2020, I’ll be pushing to scale DCA to high 6-figures in yearly revenue, improve our client-retention, build out our social proof base, while adding full-time members to the team so I can leverage my time and accelerate our growth.

Hello everyone, I am Aparna Thyagarajan. I Co-Founded Shobitam, one of the fastest-growing ethnic fashion brands with my sister Ambika in 2019. We work with our talented weavers, and award-winning artists to design, curate, and deliver beautiful ethnic weaves. Through our brand, we aim to make traditional Indian handlooms accessible across the globe.

My name Warnisha Foster I am the CEO of Kiss My Crown Essentials. I founded Kiss My Crown Essentials in March of 2020 and I started offering my products a few at a time to see how they would go over with the public. My first product was Strawberry Rose’ Champagne Soap. The idea for this soap came from looking at my life as a single mom of four I started to feel burned out. I needed something to make me feel feminine, Make me feel like a woman, Grown and sexy. This did the trick.

Our mission here a KMCE is to let mothers like myself know that we are seen, we are beautiful and we are a necessity.

We are Eugenio Ferrante and Ahmed Nizar, co-founders of Casa Mia Coliving.

Today, we have 150 bedrooms in central Singapore across popular neighborhoods such as River Valley, Tiong Bahru, and Orchard. We have reached an annualized revenue of $2.5M, and we’re growing fast!

I am Bryan Greene, I own and started The LOOK Fitness in Newport Beach, California.

The LOOK Fitness is currently making $53,000 per month and growing monthly, fighting back from the hardships we've endured. We moved from our original location as we outgrew our first location and survived a drawn-out build-out that was supposed to take only two months, which took one year and eight months, and COVID in Southern California with some of the most strict closures.

Hi, my name is Ana Colak-Fustin and I am the founder of ByRecruiters, a website and resume shop for job seekers (originally named Recommended By Recruiters). In 2018, I started an Etsy shop selling resume templates that have since supported over 6,000 job seekers on their career journey.

Since 2018, I have sold over 6,000 resume templates supporting job seekers from 50+ countries. Today my business brings in between $1,500 to $4,000 per month.